Pool cleaning leads are turning to be more difficult to generate due to the number of competitors in any city in the USA. However, companies can upgrade their lead scoring and bring the needed and desired clients with the right lead generation strategies.
The trick in all this is that you need to learn and determine the best strategies out of the bunch you can choose from, and how you implement them will be influential in the result.
For us, digital lead generation is the best option, but this doesn’t mean general and regular options don’t work. In other words, traditional strategies can be useful, especially for local areas and how companies like pool cleaning work.
We know new customers are vital to your business, whether you’re looking to grow your repair job opportunities or increase your weekly service customer base. For it, we want you to start by remembering these two facts:
- You need high-quality leads, not only random ones.
- More leads mean more clients. Basic math.
With this in mind, we can start moving forward in the strategies we would recommend any pool cleaning company to rely on:
Make a Plan for Your Pool Service Company
This sounds more like something you would do even before starting your business, but most people ignore it or don’t know that one for marketing is also crucial.
However, we want you to focus on this plan like it was your business one and have a new vision regarding how you learn about the crucial facts. This is why the plan will include pretty much regular aspects but also guarantee you cover new ones:
- Always check your service area and if your efforts are focused on them.
- Identify your target market and update it based on any demographic or cultural changes.
- Analyze market trends all the time.
- You need to know about your competition 24/7.
- Keep your pool cleaning services updated in pricing.
- Create an organizational chart.
- Get creative with your marketing ideas and add all of them here.
The advice we would provide here is to allocate a low percentage of revenue to start advertising these ideas if you want to maximize your marketing strategies. 10 to 20 percent of revenue is a good starting point.
Don’t forget to include financial projections of future revenue and expenses for the short-term as well as long-term in your business plan.
Get the Right Prospects
No matter what your current services may be, you should pay attention to the market and target these three commercial categories weekly:
- Qualified pool owners who are not on weekly service: This group consists of pool owners with enough income to pay weekly for your pool cleaning services.
- Current pool owners who are on weekly service: Some pool owners may be interested in switching to a different service company. Don’t miss the chance to attract these clients.
- New pool owners: There are always new homeowners in a neighborhood. They may be interested in weekly pool services, so be there and ready to cover their needs.
Make sure you reach these types of clients through any marketing channel you choose. It is important to know how many leads you can attract according to your marketing channel selected (Website or blogs, radio, outdoor signage, or printed media).
Generate Qualified Phone Calls
We are aware that phone calls may be a little outdated in today’s digital age. However, when it comes to clients in your local area, most of them still prefer to pick up the phone to call for someone who could clean their pool. This is a simple but important fact.
Don’t follow the trend of other companies that focus only on submitting web forms to get clicks. Many pool service companies are familiar with the importance of calling rather than clicking.
In this type of industry, you simply cannot sell weekly pool services without talking to leads on the phone. Your marketing strategy should be designed to get and measure qualified calls.
If you are still doubtful, these are just some facts you should consider:
- Phone calls are 12 times more likely than web leads to be real clients in this niche.
- Website leads are passive. A phone call allows you to directly engage them instead of wasting a lot of time for them to come to you.
But keep in mind that this strategy will only work if you contact the right people and work on your target market. If you call others that aren’t truly worth it, it will be a waste of time and effort and leave a stain on your company’s reputation.
Conversation, Interaction & Analysis
Now you know how important phone calls are for your lead generation process, but you still need something else to compliment them, a call tracking system.
Call tracking is very useful; however, it has one problem. It stops collecting data after the phone rings, which is problematic as many useful things happen after the call is taken, including all your client’s personal information.
Some companies give you the chance to track all those conversations and record them. This way, they are available for later listening. However, make sure you’re dealing with a legal business and that you usually let your potential prospects know they are being recorded, as some laws are very strict today about this.
With this in mind, you need to focus on these factors during your calls and what you want the system to track or let you know when listening to the records:
- Lead Interaction: Was the caller able to speak directly with one of your employees? Was the employee polite, enthusiastic, and professional?
- Contact Information: Your employees must be getting the caller’s name, phone number, and physical address.
- Sales Process: Was your employee able to make an appointment or at least a follow-up call? Did the lead have any objections to your terms of service? Did you miss an opportunity? If you did, what can you do to improve?
Rethink Your Marketing Strategy When Needed (& Right Now)
Don’t worry; everyone may become stuck doing the same thing year after year. If you feel like this is indeed your case, here are some questions to ask yourself in order to organize your thoughts:
- Are you reaching the most sales-qualified leads possible?
- Is your business marketing message powerful enough?
- Are you tracking and monitoring phone calls?
- Did you train your employees properly to deliver the best services?
Remember that you can also use new and inexpensive tools such as prospect targeting, call tracking, and conversation analysis to evaluate your marketing strategies and increase your chances of securing more high-quality leads.
Just take the time to determine whether your efforts are working or not and where do you need to change this. It is always important to rethink your strategies and plan to ensure the best results.
Communicate the Most Effectively
In this industry, there is something known as the “Three Second Moment of Truth,” which means you only have three seconds to grab your leads’ attention. In order to do this, the front panel of your direct mailing postcard is crucial, as well as any phrase, word, or sentence you use when calling or contacting them in other channels.
Here are some tips to ensure you get the best results:
- A short line: Your first line should encourage leads to continue reading or listening to you by explaining what you are selling. It should be concise and targeted at your ideal type of client.
- Pay attention to design for a website: It should be distinctive and attract attention. A well-designed direct mail piece will have a headline that is read by eight in ten people.
- Make a compelling offer on the front page: Use direct marketing strategies to make clients look for you and your services. People should see the offer prominently and be encouraged to do business with you immediately.
- Be specific about the benefits: Don’t hide anything and be clear from the start. Don’t assume that leads will know the benefits of your pool cleaning service without a proper explanation.
- Call to Action: Be frontal and tell your leads exactly how you want them to act – CALL THIS NUMBER TODAY – to get the compelling offer.
- Contact pathway: Don’t forget to include your contact info. Provide a number and all of your social media channels.
- Company name and logo: They both should be prominently displayed, but they shouldn’t overshadow the offer. Keep in mind that your clients care about what you can do to help them, not who or how amazing you claim you are.
- A note on graphics: While graphics are important when using Direct mail advertising, don’t focus too much on them. Remember that your main goal is to help qualified leads solve their problems.
- A word on the back panel: Most people turn the card over to find out more. This panel supports your Call-to-action and offer on the front panel.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Your Site
SEO is an excellent method to increase the efficiency of your lead generation process. Simply put, it helps to improve your website’s rank in organic search results.
Want to know why SEO is so important for your business? Well, believe it or not, 93% of your client’s online experiences begin with a search engine. You need to make sure that your website is the first one they find when looking for a pool cleaning company.
SEO has two major parts that you should focus on:
Keyword Optimization
Keyword optimization means that you need to choose the right keywords to ensure your website appears in the top search results for pool cleaning companies.
People use specific keywords when they search for information. This allows them to find the best results. To be found in the most relevant results, you should conduct a keyword search.
Once you’ve chosen your keywords, it’s time to optimize your pages. Use a specific keyword to rank for that keyword in your pages if you are trying to rank for it. Google crawls your website looking for keywords to understand your page’s context.
Adding keywords helps visitors to understand your page better and determine if their questions can be answered quickly.
You can place keywords anywhere on your page. These places include the body, goal description, and header. Make sure you don’t use them often because this can lead to keyword spamming, negatively impacting your ranking.
Link Building
Using backlinks will increase your business reputation and the trust of your leads when looking for pool cleaning services online.
In simple terms, a backlink is when a website links to your content from its own page.
You should know that Google will be more likely to trust information that is linked to a trusted site than if it doesn’t. This way, Google will increase your site’s rank to make it easier for more people to find your business.
One of the best ways to get backlinks is to create high-quality content. Use this tactic to attract industry experts and let them examine your content. If they like what you do, they might use it on their site.
This is actually a great way to promote your pool cleaning services because you get the chance to establish a relationship with other businesses.
Advertising via Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
If you have some extra income, you may want to use it to get PPC advertising. It is a great way of obtaining more qualified leads for your business without spending a fortune while getting top results.
These ads appear at the top search results and are tagged by the word “ad,” which you should be familiar with. It is similar to SEO because you also need to use keywords in order to make it work properly.
Make sure you choose the most relevant keywords for your campaign, and you can use the same you have chosen for your organic strategies.
Once you have chosen your keywords, you can bid for your place. Your maximum bid is the amount that you will spend every time someone clicks on an advertisement.
Moreover, this amount can be adjusted at any time, and your maximum bid and quality rating will determine your placement. But keep in mind that costs vary depending on the specific keyword you’re targeting.
PPC is a great choice for pool companies because it increases your online visibility. It’s an efficient method to reach more qualified because PPC visitors are more likely to convert than organic visitors or, at least, tend to be easier to convert.
You have full control over your PPC campaign. Your campaign can be run whenever you like, how it looks, and for how long. You can limit the amount you spend on PPC campaigns and set a budget that you will stick to.
This method is also cost-efficient since you only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement. This way, you make sure to spend your money on leads that are most likely to convert.
Content Marketing Shouldn’t Be Missed
Creating content should be one of your main goals if you are trying to put your company at the top of any search results when people are searching online for pool cleaning services.
It is one of the best ways as of today to get new qualified leads. You can literally post all of your content on any social media platform and link it to your own website to get more visits.
Blogs, pictures, videos, and infographics are just some examples. This content helps your leads to know more about your services and how good you are at providing them.
Be creative and try to write about relevant topics to your industry that may be interesting to your leads. This is a great way for you to attract leads to your website.
There are many types of content you can create. All of these are useful topics to write about in order to draw leads. It is possible to write about winter pool maintenance, how to clean your pool properly, and which chemicals are best.
Keep in mind that people usually don’t know a lot about pool cleaning, so they continue to search for information. If you take the time to educate them, they are more likely to choose your business.
If you don’t have the time, just give one of your employees this responsibility. You don’t need to post content every day but try to do it periodically.
Top-Notch Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing is one of them when talking about cost-effective and efficient methods to market pool services. It provides high returns to companies regardless of the specific service.
Follow these two easy steps to ensure that you have the best lead generation strategy around this and can get the desired result:
- Search for leads.
First, you need to focus on gathering email addresses in order to build a list and offer your pool services by email. However, try not to be aggressive; you don’t want to annoy your leads before even contacting them.
For example, you can host a lead magnet within an Instagram Ad. Offer a gift and tell your clients that you will need an email address in order to send it to them.
Use the same lead magnet and post it on your website, this way, you can easily collect information from the users that visit your page.
Anything could be a lead magnet. Try posting tips and tricks that can be useful for pool maintenance. Remember that any situation in which your clients need your expertise is a valuable lead magnet.
- Create your email campaign.
Work on creating a good email campaign to convert people who sign up for your lead magnet.
Your goal is to use smart strategies to get their email addresses. Don’t spam their emails. First, send them a welcome email and the next time, just leave a periodic reminder.
Your email campaign should include a mixture of:
- Valuable content (guide or blogs).
- Hard selling (converting leads into clients, call-to-action).
Make Your Trucks or Vehicles Rolling Billboards
Imagine if your business could be promoted 24/7 without you even having to try. Use your trucks as billboards and market your business by driving around town.
People are three times more likely to buy or contract services from brands they recognize than brands they don’t. So use this marketing tool to expose your customers as much as possible to your pool cleaning business.
Your pool truck graphics should be clear and legible, with large fonts that can be readable far away. We recommend that you hire a freelance designer to ensure your truck wraps are professional.
As a general rule, your truck wraps should include concise information about your business, such as the company name, the services you provide, and contact info. Leads should be able to read this info quickly.
However, truck wraps are not cheap, but believe us when we say that they can be easily paid off if you do it right.
Pool Software Can Help You Maximize Your Profits
There are many tools out there that can help you automate your business and make your work easier. Time is money, and you should welcome anything that can help you save some of it.
We know that many costs and problems are associated with running a pool cleaning business. These problems can be solved if you take the time to plan everything beforehand.
But in case you don’t have enough time, try using pool service software. It can help you work smarter, not harder, to improve your company’s operational efficiency and increase your overall revenue.
This software also allows your team to communicate with your clients using automated scheduling as well as booking. This greatly improves their performance and the number of clients they can attend to each time.
In case you need to monitor and improve the productivity of your techs, you can use customized data reporting to make sure that you are able to turn a profit quickly.
If you are still doubtful, you can always ask for references from any of your peers in the same industry. But believe us, when you start using this kind of technology, your earnings will surely grow exponentially.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Pool Cleaning Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Pool Cleaning Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Pool Cleaning Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.